Archive for the 'history dish' Category

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The History Dish: The Photographer’s Cheesecake

Published on January 19, 2013 in 19th century, cake, eggs, history dish and photos. 16 Comments
photo_cheescake2A cheesecake recipe for a 19th century Photographer.

The History

College was one of the most difficult and demanding times of my life.  I looked for small ways to escape the pressure, like ducking into Attenson’s Antiques on Coventry, a maze of rooms stuffed with treasures.  In the back corner was a bookshelf used as a dumping ground for an ever-growing collection of photographs.  Box after box, picked up at estate sales, ended up in this nook.  If the day was quiet enough, the shop owners would let me spread out on the floor to go through the black and white lives of people long dead.  After an hour or two, I’d have a pile of images set aside.  I’d pay ten or twenty dollars, and take my new friends home.

An albumen print of Tom Thumb and his wife, Lavinia.

An albumen print of General Tom Thumb and his wife, Lavinia.

If you’ve ever spent time sorting through thrift store images, you’ve certainly come across a type of photography known as albumen printing.  Albumen photographs are characterized by their sepia tone, glossy sheen, and sometimes a metallic shine in the dark parts of the image.  They’re also printed on a thin piece of paper glued to a thicker cardboard stock.

Albumen is made of egg whites.  This sticky substance allowed photographer to adhere photo chemicals to glass plates, allowing for the first commercially viable form of reproducible photography.  Additionally, when painted on paper, albumen created an ultra smooth surface on which to float photosensitive chemicals; the result was a highly detailed image when the photo was printed.

The process was revolutionary and used for much of the second half of the 19th century, and even into the 20th.  However, producing albumen paper used a lot of eggs whites and left a byproduct of a ton of egg yolks.  Some of those yolks could have been used in this recipe for “Photographer’s Cheesecake” published in The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy: Twenty Years of Food Writing.
.

The Recipe

In 1861, The British Journal of Photography suggested, to the amateur photographer, that he could use his excess egg yolks to make a cheese cake.  One day, after making a meringue, I had a lot of yolks on my hands and decided to give it a try.  It required very few ingredients and took less than ten minutes to assemble.  Problems started to arise when I baked it: the filling was still liquid although I had baked it longer than the recipe suggested.  When I put it in the fridge overnight, it was solid, but liquefied at room temperature. I still ate it, though.

The Photographer’s Cheesecake
Originally printed in The British Journal of Photography, 1861
Reprinted in The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy

To convert the yolks of eggs used for albumenizing to useful purposes: Dissolve a quarter of a pound of butter in a basin placed on the hob, stir in a quarter of a pound of pounded sugar, and beat well together; then add the yolks of three eggs that have been previously well-beaten; beat up altogether thoroughly; throw in half a grated nutmeg and a pinch of salt; stir, and lastly add the juice of two fine-flavoured lemons, and the rind of one lemon that has been peeled very thin; beat all up together thoroughly  and pour into a dish lined with puff-paste, and bake for about twenty minutes.  This is a most delicious dish.

1 stick butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
3 egg yolks, beaten
1/2 of a freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch of Salt
Juice of two small lemons
Zest of one lemon
Puff Paste (store bought is ok!)

Beat (using an electric mixer, if you like) butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add egg yolks, one at a time, mixing after each addition.  Add nutmeg and salt; mix.  Add lemon juice and zest; mix.  Pour into a baking dish lined with puff paste, bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

The Results

photo_cheesecake1Out of the oven.

Honestly, it tasted great!  I loved the citrus, which complemented the nutmeg well. At the same time, the technical aspects of the recipe didn’t work.  It was goopy and runny and not at all right–and I don’t think it was my mistake.  perhaps this recipe was originally published as a joke, not as a real recipe?  Which seems silly, because what on earth did those photographers do with all those egg yolks anyway?

 

The History Dish: Prehistoric Bread

Published on January 9, 2013 in bread, history dish and prehistoric. 0 Comments
bread_history1“Baking” prehistoric bread.

Finding a place to build an open fire is next to impossible in New York City, but it’s a must if you want to bake prehistoric bread.

Bread, in all its various forms, is the most widely consumed food in the world.  Recent scholarship suggests that humans started baking bread at least 30,000 years ago.  Prehistoric man had already been making gruel from water and grains, so it was a small jump to cook this mixture into a solid by frying it on stones.  The National Academy of Sciences published a study that paleoanthropologists have found the remains of the starchy roots of cattails and ferns in mortar and pestle-like rocks (read about it here and here.)  The roots would have been peeled and dried before they were ground into flour and mixed with water.  Finally, the paste would be fried on heated rocks.

If you feel inspired to replicate this prehistoric recipe–like I was– I’ll warn you that Bob’s Red Mill does not make a “Cattail/Fern Blend Flour” (yet). Settle for a “10 Grain Breakfast Cereal” full of ancient grains, like millet, coarsely ground.

Then, visit your local home improvement store and poke around the slate tiling.  You may be able to nab a few pieces of broken tile for free. That’s what you should do if you live in a major metropolitan area, like me.  If you live somewhere normal, walk outside and pick up a flat rock.

Now, you need to build a big fire.  That’s another thing that’s difficult to do in New York City.  Fortunately, I have a connection with a historic site in Brooklyn that has an outdoor fireplace and bake oven.  The site is surrounded by a park for tiny toddlers; it’s fun when they watch me cook, but it also makes me feel like I’m in Kitchen Stadium.

Let the flames die down until you have a bed of glowing, hot coals.  Set the slate tiles on top of the coals, and wait about ten minutes.  Combine three cups of grain with about a cup of water and mix into a thick, workable paste.  Make the dough into half-inch thick patties and place them on the stones.  After five minutes, flip them with a piece of bark and you’ll be amazed to see the grain is browning on the heated rock.  They may stick, so if you have any wild boar’s lard–or something similarly appropriate–I recommend greasing your cooking rocks in advance.

 

bread_history2The results!

In about ten minutes, you’ll have a pile of hot, crispy cakes.  The outside is crunchy and tastes like popcorn, the inside is moist and dense.  I fed one to a passing park baby–she described it as “pretty good,” but maybe she was just being nice.

 

***

A portion of this article originally appeared on History.com

 

The History Dish: Galette de Roi

Published on January 8, 2013 in cake, history dish and holidays. 1 Comment

galletteA mediocre Galette des Rois.

I didn’t put this post up yesterday, and I promised I would.  After the cake was consumed, we drank some wine, as is the custom, and things happen.  Namely “strip Apples to Apples,” which it turns out is not a very effective game.

So, a day later, here are the results of my King Cake experiment.  First, the recipe, as printed in The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy–-it’s from a 1927 cookbook, but the author claims it is much older, dating from the time of Louis VIX.  My French isn’t good enough to check the primary sources to confirm.

gallette_recipe

I did something really dumb: I didn’t follow the recipe.  A King Cake is supposed to be a lot like a puff paste and I was all like “Oh! I know how to make a puff paste, and this isn’t it.”  So where the recipe says to mix in softened butter, I cut in frozen butter, like a pie dough.  And then I accidentally added too much water.  Then, I didn’t cut the design deep enough (it’s supposed to be three stalks of wheat and FPF).  I baked it too long and burned the bottom, and the sprinkled sugar didn’t melt evenly, and left psoriasis-like patches of glaze.  Kindof a disaster.

galllette2

It’s suppose to be a flaky tower of slightly sweet, buttery crispness.  Mine was this dense burnt thing.  Or maybe historic King Cakes were denser, I don’t know.   But it was consumed in due time, and a king was crowned, and a good time was had by all.  I’d try it again next year.

gallette3

 

By the way, did you know Epiphany is a really big deal in Florida?

The History Dish: Automat Pumpkin Pie

Published on November 20, 2012 in 20th century, history dish, holidays, pie and thanksgiving. 11 Comments
A pumpkin pie with sweetened condensed milk. Can I get a hell yeah?

If you are going to be in NYC anytime in the next month, be sure to stop by the New York Public Library to catch the Lunch Hour NYC exhibit.  It’s free and cute and you’ll learn a lot of fun facts about food.

The coolest part of the exihibit is the installation of  a functional automat.  Automats were the precursors to fast food; meals were made from scratch at commissaries all around the city, then shipped to the automat restaurants.  The food was placed behind little windows, and after dropping a few coins in a slot, you could open the doors and retrieve you treats.  A new automat opened, and closed, on St. Mark’s street a few years ago.

Horn & Hardart, the company that innovated the automat concept, was just as well known for the quality of their food as their unique way of delivering it.  At the Lunch Hour exhibit, you can play with their automat machine, opening the doors and such.  You won’t find any mac and cheese or baked beans inside, however–but they did thoughtfully include recipes of all the restaurant’s most famous dishes.

Horn and Hardart’s automat, from Lunch Hour NYC.

One of the recipes I grabbed when I visited was Hron & Hardart’s recipe for pumpkin pie.  I had a pie pumpkin hanging out in my kitchen; it had been a Halloween decoration, and I decided it was time for it to go to a better place.  Inside me.  I roasted it, which is an easy way to process pumpkin–see how here.  I also made a crust from scratch from this recipe, which is my go to pie crust.

The filling was easy to mix up and the pie doesn’t bake for long.  The recipe tells you “Insert a silver knife into the filling about one inch from the side of the pan.  If the knife comes out clean, the filling is done.”   I’ve never read pumpkin pie instructions so specific–a silver knife?  Using this method, the center comes out underdone and extremely creamy.  I’m not sure if I liked it though, being used to a firmer pie.

But the wildest thing about this pie is I realized I made a HUGE mistake when I baked it that turned out to be wonderful.  I only just now noticed that the recipe calls for evaporated milk NOT sweetened condensed milk, which is what I used.  But holy moly, have you ever made a pumpkin pie with sweetened condensed milk?  It’s astounding.  The caramel-ee flavor of the sweetened condensed milk really comes through in the final product.  Creamy, burnty sugary, pumpkin…awesome.

God pumpkin pie is great.  Why don’t we make it year round?  I guess something about it just doesn’t feel right in the summertime.

The History Dish: 1840 Chicken Curry

Published on May 25, 2012 in 19th century, chicken, hearth cooking, history dish and Queen Victoria. 9 Comments
Vigorously stirring curried chicken at my hearth cooking class in Brooklyn. Photo by Edmarie Crespo.

Surprising, isn’t it?  To see a curry dish from 1840?  The history of curry in the United States is actually much older than one would expect.

The History

The search for affordable spices pushed the English East India Trading company to establish routes into India as early as the first half of the 18th century.  By 1820, it had used its army to subdue most of India and the government assumed official control of the country by 1858.  It’s not a happy history, but because of India’s colonial government, the flavors many native dishes mixed with English dining habits.

At the same time the British Raj was establishing itself, Americans were busy falling in love with Queen Victoria.  Although England and America had had their differences in the past, when Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837, we went gaga for the young Queen.  After marrying her fashionable German husband Albert in 1840, the power couple could do no wrong in our eyes.

Victoria led the trends in the Western World, from Christmas trees to crinolines to curry powder.  The highly-spiced seasoning blend came from India with returning soldiers; and after gaining popularity in England, became a trend in the United States.

Curry powder, and the use of the word curry, are Western inventions and do not reflect any specific Indian food.   A similar mixture of spices used in India is called garam masala, but the blend is proprietary and different all over the country.

The spice blend for an 1840s curry.

The Recipe

I don’t know if this is the earliest curry recipe in an American cookbook, but it’s the earliest one I have found so far.  The author, Eliza Leslie, directs you to make your own curry powder for this dish.

Chicken Curry
Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches by Eliza Leslie, 1840

2 chickens, broken down into breasts, thighs, and legs; marinated in a salt water brine at least a half hour.

To make the curry paste:
2 tablespoons powdered ginger
1 tablespoon powdered turmeric
1 teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon mace
3 cloves
½ teaspoon cardamom
Pinch Cayenne
Pinch Salt
3 medium onions

Make the curry paste: combine all ingredients in a food processor and blend until it forms a paste.  Place a quart of water over heat to boil.  When it comes to a boil, add the curry paste and simmer until dissolved.  Keep at a boil until you are ready to pour it over the chicken.

Remove chicken from marinade and pat dry.  Heat a generous amount of butter in a pan, then add chicken pieces.  Fry, skin side down, until brown.  Add the curry water, adding more water if necessary to cover the chicken completely.  Simmer until chicken is cooked and tender.  Add two tablespoons of butter kneaded with an equal quantity of flour.  Simmer until the sauce has thickened.  Serve with boiled rice.

A student in my hearth cooking class adds curry paste to a pot of boiling water.  Photo by Russell Karmel.

The Results

The curry paste made in this recipe had a floral smell and flavor; and although spicy, not at all hot.  The turmeric gave it the typical coloring of a curry, but it tasted unlike any curry I had ever had before.

That being said, it seemed to be missing something.  Although the chicken was pleasant, it lacked the heat of contemporary curry powders which I find makes all of the more subtle spices in the bland marry and sing.

But I’ve also come to suspect that Americans, throughout history, have craved progressively hotter and hotter foods.  At the time of Ms. Leslie’s curry powder, the hottest spice mentioned in popular American cookbooks was black pepper.  In contrast, in the past fifty years chili powder, garlic, and peppers, with greater and greater concentrations of capsaicin, have become more and more common in American food.  I think we have developed a taste for, and a tolerance for, heat.  If Eliza Leslie tasted a modern Indian-American curry, I think her head would explode.

The History Dish: Pearlash, The First Chemical Leavening

Published on May 23, 2012 in 18th century, baking, cookies, cooking american cookery, hearth cooking and history dish. 42 Comments

Pearlash is powdery and slightly moist.

The History

If you were to scoop the ashes out of your fireplace and soak them in water, the resulting liquid would be full of lye.  Lye can be used to make three things: soap, gun powder, or chemical leavener.

A “leavener” is a substance that gives baked goods their lightness.  Today, we think nothing of adding a teaspoon of baking soda or baking powder to our cakes and cookies.  But using chemicals to produce the carbon dioxide necessary to raise a cupcake is a relatively new idea.

Before chemicals, cooks would use yeast.  Not just in bread, but yeast was often added into cake batter, along with a helpful dose of beer dregs or wine.  The alternative was whipping eggs to add lightness, like in a sponge cake, although that particular recipe didn’t become popular until the end of the 19th century, after mechanized egg beaters were introduce.

Sometime in the 1780s an adventurous woman added potassium carbonate, or pearlash, to her dough.  I’m ignorant as to how pearlash was produced historically, but the idea of using a lye-based chemical  in cooking is an old one: everything from pretzels, to ramen, to hominy is processed with lye.  Pearlash, combined with an acid like sour milk or citrus, produces a chemical reaction with a carbon dioxide by-product.  Used in bakery batter, the result is little pockets of CO2 that makes baked goods textually light.  Pearlash was only in use for a short time period, about 1780-1840.  After that, Saleratus, which is chemically similar to baking soda, was introduced and more frequently used.

I was curious to try this product out and see if it actually worked.  I ordered a couple of ounces from Deborah Peterson’s Pantry, the best place for all your 18th century cooking needs.   I used it during my recent hearth cooking classes in a period appropriate recipe.

The Recipe

The recipe, for orange-caraway New Year’s Cakes, came from the cookbook-manuscript of Maria Lott Lefferts, a member of one of the founding families of Brooklyn.  The use of pearlash, plus a recipe for “Ohio Cake,” serves to date this book to about 1820.  It looks like this:

“New Year Cake

28 lbs of flour 10 lbs of Sugar 5 lbs of Butter

caraway seed and Orange peal”

This recipe doesn’t mention pearlash, but several of the other recipes in this book do.  I checked the first cookbook printed in American, Amelia Simmon’s American Cookery, for an idea of how much pearlash to add.  Here is the recipe I came up with:

New Years Cakes
Based on Marie Lott Leffert’s cookbook, c. 1820

1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 stick salted butter
3 teaspoons pearlash dissolved in 1/2 cup milk
4 cups all purpose flour
Zest and juice of one orange
1 tsp ground caraway and 1 tsp whole caraway

Whisk together flour, zest and caraway.  Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add orange juice and pearlash, then mix.  Slowly add flour; mixing until flour is incorporated.  Put in freezer one hour.  Break off small pieces and roll very thin; cut with a cookie cutter or knife.  Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  Bake until cookies are slightly golden on the bottom, about 10 minutes.

***

Cookies leavened with pearlash come out of the oven.

The Results

I made the dough in advance and froze it, then dragged it to Brooklyn to be baked in a very period appropriately in a wood fire bake oven.

When the cookies came out of the oven, they had risen!  They gained as much height, and as much textural lightness, as a modern cookie made with baking powder.

But how did they taste?  The first bite contained the loveliness of orange and caraway (for a modern version of this recipe, I highly recommend using this recipe, and replacing the coriander with orange zest and caraway).  But after swallowing, a horrible, alkaline bitterness filled my mouth.  My body reacted accordingly: assuming that I had just been poisoned, I salivated  uncontrollably.

At first, I wondered if I hadn’t used too much pearlash.  But then something dawned on me:  the earliest recipes to use pearlash were gingerbread recipes.  Of the four recipes in Simmon’s cookbook, half of them were for gingerbread.  A highly spiced gingerbread probably did a lot to hide the taste of the bitter base chemical.

And that’s why I like historic gastronomy.  If I hadn’t actually baked with pearlash, and tasted it, I never would have made the gingerbread connection.  There’s something to be said for living history.

The History Dish: Mrs. Lefferts’ Pumpkin Pudding

Published on November 23, 2011 in 19th century, history dish, holidays and pie. 6 Comments

 

Pumpkin Pudding

Half a pound of stewed pumpkin Three Eggs A quarter of a pound of fresh butter or a pint of Cream A quarter of a pound of powdered white sugar Half a glass of wine and brandy mixed Half a glass of rosewater teaspoon full of mixed mixed spice nutmeg, mace, cinnamon. Stew some pumpkin with as little water as possible.  Drain it in a cullender and prep it till dry.  When cold, weigh half a pound and pass it through a sieve.  Prepare the spice.  Stir together the sugar and butter or Cream  till they are perfectly light.  Add to them gradually the spice and liquid.  Beat the eggs very light and stir them into the butter and sugar alternately with the pumpkin.  Cover a soup plate with puff paste and put in the mixture.  Bake it in a moderate oven about half an hour.

This recipe was written well over a hundred years ago, by a Maria Lefferts.  The Lefferts, one of the first families of Brooklyn, lived in the area that is now known as Prospect Park;  one of their homes still remains as a historic site.  Their papers reside in the collections of the Brooklyn Historical Society, which is where I came across this handwritten cookbook, and this recipe for Pumpkin Pudding.

Pumpkin Pudding is better known today as Pumpkin Pie.  I love cooking an American standard from a historic recipe because it often gives me a new perspective.  After looking at recipes from the late 18th century, I retronovated my yearly pumpkin pie recipe with a 1/4 cup of brandy and 1/3 cup of pure maple syrup.  And I seldom make an apple pie without a dash of rosewater and some white wine.

Mrs. Leffert’s recipe dates to about 1820; her instructions are refreshingly precise, almost modern.  In most cookbooks from that time, let alone handwritten cookbooks, recipes can be as verbose as a list of ingredients.

***
Pumpkin Pudding
From the handwritten cookbook of Maria Lefferts, c. 1820.

1/4 lb (1 stick)  butter or 1 pint cream
1/4 lb (1/2 cup) super fine sugar
1/4 cup a glass of wine and brandy (I used brandy only)
1/4 cup a glass rose water
1 tsp mixed nutmeg, mace and cinnamon (I used 1/4 tsp each nutmeg and mace, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon)
1/2 lb (1  cup) stewed pumpkin
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  In an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  With the mixer on low, add spices and then brandy and rosewater.   Beat eggs with a fork until light, then add them to the butter mixture, alternating with the pumpkin.

Press a puff paste into a pie pan, and fill with pumpkin mixture. Bake for one hour.  Allow to cool completely before serving.  Custard pies are always better the next day.

For the crust, I used a basic puff paste recipe from the book Puff.

***

I chose to use butter, instead of cream, because it is Leffert’s first suggestion, and it’s not an ingredient normally used in pumpkin pie.  I was curious how it would change the texture.  However, by the time the pie was mixed and ready for the oven, the butter had made it a lumpy mess.

Lumpity.

I was also extremely apprehensive about how much rosewater was going into this pie.  “1/2 a glass,” based on the proportion of the brandy I was adding, I estimated at being a 1/4 of a cup.   As I measured the odorous liquid, I wondered if I shouldn’t cut it down to two tablespoons.  I looked at Roommate Jeff, who had creeped into the kitchen.  “Should I put less rosewater in or should I just stop being a pussy and follow the recipe?”

“Stop being a pussy.”

And in went the rosewater.   While I was making the pie, the entire kitchen stunk of rosewater.  While the pie was baking, a sickening-sweet rosewater smell drifted from the oven.  When it was finally time to cut the pie and try a taste, the only flavor that my taste buds could understand was rosewater.

Blech. While I don’t mind rosewater in appropriate quantities, that’s all I could taste in the recipe: the sweet, floral, citrus notes of distilled rose petals, in nauseating quantities.  Even if I reduced the quantity of rosewater, I’m not sure how I would feel about it paired with pumpkin.  I tend to enjoy it more is dishes that are slightly acidic, like apple pie.

More than that, the texture was very unappealing.  Oddly, it had a gritty mouth-feel.

At any rate, the 190-year-old Pumpkin Pudding is coming into work with me today, so we’ll see what the verdict is from my coworkers.  They’re nerds, so they’ll at least appreciate the history.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Mrs. Lefferts: I’ve had better.

The History Dish: Sour Apple Compote

Published on November 1, 2011 in 20th century, apples and history dish. 0 Comments
Sweet n’ Sour! Apple compote.

I always like to share a good apple recipe this time of year, so you can take advantage of the fall apple bounty, or use up a couple of fruits on the verge of going bad.  This is a really unique one from the Manual For Cooking and Baking.

 

The lovely lady pictured is Hinde Anchamnitzki (pronounce Hinn-dah Ahn-prwah-nit-ski), who published the first Yiddish cookbook in America.  The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is working on translating it, and is planning on building a larger program around her seminal work utilizing their new demo kitchen space.

Below is her recipe for “English Apple Compote” that plays with the sweet/sour flavors that traditionally appear in Jewish cooking.  I’ve tried it, and it’s fantastic.  It calls for “Sour Salts,” which is citric acid; I was able to find it at Williams Sonoma, of all places.  It gives the dish the mouthpuckering Sour Patch kids sensation one doesn’t normally associated with turn-of-the-century food.  Additionally, cooking the raisins in the sugar syrup teases the flavor out of the dried fruits, and give the dish a distinct raisin tang.

The original recipe is below; it was traslated for me by vice president of education at the Tenement Museum, Annie Polland; I modernized the recipe myself.

The original recipe.

***
European Apple Compote
From Manual For Cooking and Baking by Hinde Anchamnitzki, 1901.
1/2 lb Sugar
1/4 lb Raisins
1/2 tsp Sour Salts (Citric Acid)
1/4 c Sugar
6 medium baking apples
Combine sugar, raisins, sour salt and water in a large pot; cook over a medium heat until all of the sugar is dissolved. Peel and core apples, and cut them into 1/4 in. slices.  Cook in a large pan, covered, until the apple slices are tender when pierced with a fork.  Add to sugar syrup; allow to cool, and serve.

***

If you like, you can pair this compote with a pie crust, like this one made of Matzo meal.  The crust is tasty enough to serve any time of year, not just for Passover!

 

The History Dish: George Washington’s Breakfast

Published on August 25, 2011 in 18th century, history dish, pancakes and presidents. 9 Comments
George Washington’s breakfast: Three corn meal pancakes and three cups of tea.

“He rose before sunrise, always wrote or read until seven in summer or half past seven in the winter.  His breakfast was then ready–he ate three small mush cakes swimming in butter and honey, and drank three cups of tea without cream.”

–Nelly Custis Leiws, Washington’s step-granddaughter
(as republished in The Founding Foodies by Dave DeWitt)

I have a very specific obsession with menus; it’s not just the historic recipes I’m fascinated with, but the order in which people ate them, the occassion,  and the time of day.  I hope that by consuming foods in the same way, I can understand something about another way of life.  After I read the above qoute about George Washington’s morning routine, it prompted me to step into his shoes and consume his breakfast.

Last night, I texted my boyfriend:  “This will seem like a strange reqeust, but I need to get up at 6am.  Im trying to emulate george washington.”

To which my boyfriend promptly responded: “K sweets.  Sounds like a good idea. He was pretty.  Bad ass.”

The qoute from Washingotn’s step-grandaughter came from The Founding Foodies by Dave DeWitt, a new publication on early Americans who affected what we eat today.  Washington was a really badass farmer:  he turned a huge profit each year, likely due to the fact that he was always ready to try a new technique or a new trade, adding a grist mill and a distillery to his property late in life.  Having  visited his home two years ago, I enjoyed enivsioning him awake in the early hours of the morning, quietly reading, thinking, or penning letters, then sitting down to breakfast.

I set my alarm for 5:45 and slept through it.  Luckily, boyfriend Brian had set his and physcially rolled me out of bed at 6.  I have trouble getting up in the morning, which is unfortunate because I actually love the mornings.  Quiet and restful, being up before everyone else settles my mind, and gives me a headstart on the day.  I installed myself at the kitchen table, wrote a few emails, and read: World’s Largest Stove Destroyed–By Fire; A Feast for the Eyes; and The Ladies of the 17th Century Were Way More Hardcore than You.  Then, it was time to attack my breakfast.

Unlike Washington, I do not have slaves.  I cleaned my own kitchen, brewed my own tea, and mixed up my own batter for mush cakes:


Indian Mush Cakes, from Directions For Cookery, In Its Various Branches By Miss Leslie.  Philadelphia: E.L. Carey & Hart, 1840.

I scaled this recipe down, mixing 2 cups cold water with 1 1/3 cups cornmeal.  I used a sifter to add the cornmeal to the water, while whisking constantly.  This ended up being a great technique, as it did a good job preventing lumps.   Last, I added 1/3 cup whole wheat flour and a pinch of salt.

When bubbles start to appear, it’s time to flip!

The batter was quite thin, so I decided to use a small, non-stick skillet.  Butter went in the skillet, followed by enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan.  When bubbles began to appear on the surface, I flipped it (with confidence) and cooked the other side until brown.  Then, with a plate stacked high, I tucked slivers of butter in between the layers and covered the whole thing over with warm honey.

I had been concerned about the lack of leavning in the pancakes, but although they weren’t light and fluffy, they weren’t dense either.  They had a great, rugged texture, and pretty much anything “swimming” in butter is gonna taste pretty good.

We don’t really know if Nelly Custis’ account of Washington’s breakfast is factual, or if she just said it to make him sound more austere and awesome, unlike Ben Franklin, who “…ate an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef…” (his own words).  But I have to admit, I’m feeling pretty bad ass right now (alot like this). I sat and munched my mush cakes, thinking about George, and how different his mornings may have been.  I have to admit, he may be displacing Thomas Jefferson as my favorite founding father.

The History Dish: Gazpacho and the Red Snapper

Published on August 1, 2011 in 19th century, alcohol, cocktail hour, history dish, new york, tomatoes and vegetables. 2 Comments
The first “gaspacho” recipe, from 1824.

Yesterday I appeared on Heritage Radio Network’s We Dig Plants, the bawdiest horticulture show on the web.  This past Sunday’s show was all about tomatoes, and I popped on as a special guest to share some historic tomato recipes. You can listen to the whole show here.

I brought along a few tubs of gazpacho I made from an 1824 recipes.  They were crazy delicious (I saved the leftover for my lunch today).  Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife, published in 1824, has some of the earliest tomato recipes in print, and the first gazpacho recipe printed EVER on the planet.  At least that we know of.  The directions are pretty self explanatory, so here is the original recipe.

I did not stew and make my own tomato juice, I found this great, strained, tomato puree in a box at the store.  The gazpacho was more like a cold, fresh salad, and was really wonderful.  Carmen, one of the show’s hosts, even took some home to her tomato-hating husband in hopes that it would turn him into a tomato lover.

I also showed up with Bloody Marys–or, more accurately, Red Snappers, as they were originally known.  When the drink was created in the 1920s, vodka wasn’t yet widely available in the United States; the liquor of choice was gin!  The recipe for the Red Snapper, from the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis hotel in New York, is below. I actually prefer the gin over vodka; I would recommend Hendrick’s gin; the cucumber notes compliment the tomatoes beautifully.

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The Red Snapper
From the St. Regis Bar, 1920s

1 1/2 oz Gin
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
4 dashes Tabasco sauce
Pinch of salt and pepper
1/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
4 ounces tomato juice

Combine all ingredients in a glass and shake or stir to mix.  Serve chilled.

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Both of these recipes are great if you need to use up a tomato surplus; For more history on both of these recipes, listen to the entire radio show here!

And on a somewhat unrelated note, I attended my first “crawfish boil” yesterday at the Brooklyn Brainery’s Summer Explosion.  I was all geared up to eat my first crayfish, but the sight of their yellow guts spilling out of their exoskeletons turned me off.  I don’t do well with invertebrates.  Instead, I stuffed my face with peach cobbler.